The 2027 Conservation License Plate grant round is open with “letters of intent to apply” due Sept. 30, according to an announcement from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, a division of the N.H. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. “The grants are one of several programs funded through the purchase of New Hampshire’s ‘Moose’ license plates. Each year, legislatively designated state agencies receive funds raised through these sales for specific programs; 100 percent of the funds allotted to the Arts Council are returned to the state’s communities through projects supported by the Council’s Conservation License Plate grant program,” the release said. “Requests may be made for $2,000-$30,000 and matching funds are not required. Projects must occur between December 1, 2026 and November 30, 2027.” See nharts.dncr.nh.gov/grants for grant details, and see mooseplate.com if you’re thinking about upgrading your license plates.
Advocacy conference
New Futures, which describes itself as a group focused on “nonpartisan, evidence-based solutions to New Hampshire’s health challenges,” will hold its “New Futures’ Policy + Advocacy Conference: Speaking Up for What Matters” on Thursday, Nov. 19, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord, according to a press release. The event aims to “help Granite Staters of all experience levels turn their voice into action at the Statehouse,” the release said. “The conference brings together advocates, coalition partners, service providers, and civic-minded community members for a full day dedicated to demystifying New Hampshire’s legislative process and building the skills to take action on the issues they care about,” the release said. See conference.new-futures.org to register and for a breakdown of the schedule including sessions and speakers. See new-futures.org for more on the organization.
Fall workshops
The Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St. in Manchester, has announced upcoming workshops and classes, according to a press release. Two artists whose works are in the Currier’s exhibition “Radical Quiet: Contemporary Drawings of Nature by Victoria Elbroch, Nancy Friese, and Margot Glass” will lead courses. “Chasing Color: A Plein Air Watercolor Workshop with Nancy Friese at the grounds of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Zimmerman House” is a one-day workshop that will take place Tuesday, Oct. 6, the release said. “Explorations in Natural Ink Making and Painting with Margot Glass” is a one-day workshop that will take place Saturday, Oct. 24, the release said. A five-week workshop “The Mindful Sketchbook: Drawing Nature with Melissa Richard” will run Wednesdays, Oct. 7 through Nov. 4, from 10 a.m. to noon, the release said. The Currier is also offering a four-week workshop on Thursdays, Oct.29 through Nov. 19, called “Let’s Draw! The Art of the Portrait with Peter Clive” and a one-day workshop on Saturday, Nov. 21, called “Dream Spaces: Construction, Assemblage, and Collage with Kristi Nyhan,” the release said. See currier.org for prices and to register.
Catch Cookie Queens, a documentary about four Girl Scouts and their cookie selling endeavors, screening Saturday, Sept. 5, at Red River Theatres, 11 S. Main St. in Concord, according to redrivertheatres.org, where you can purchase tickets. See cookiequeensfilm.com to watch the film’s trailer.
Tuesday, Sept. 8, is the state primary election in New Hampshire (also possibly a day your kids are off from school, if your district takes a day off on election days). See sos.nh.gov/elections for information on voting including what to bring to register on election day and a sample ballot.
United Way of Greater Nashua has two upcoming fundraisers: the “Betting on the Community” Poker Hand Pub Crawl, taking place at five downtown Nashua venues on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 4 to 8 p.m., and the Pickleball Tournament and Social at the YMCA Westwood Park in Nashua, on Saturday, Sept. 19, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to a press release. Register in beginner or intermediate doubles divisions for the pickleball tournament, the release said. For both events, see unitedwaynashua.org to register.
Singer-songwriter John Gorka performs in Manchester
Even if he’s performed since the late 1970s, winning the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Award in 1984 and coming up in the Greenwich Village Fast Folk Scene during that decade, John Gorka still feels a touch of nervousness every time he walks on stage.
“The only time I don’t … is if I’ve done a bunch of shows in a row and I’m too tired to be nervous,” Gorka said in a Zoom interview from his home in Minnesota. It means it still matters, he added. “Frank Sinatra said something about having nerves, he said that’s just a sign that you care.”
He’s still working the muscle he began to hone when the late Jack Hardy told him in 1979 that success comes from a schedule. “I told him, ‘I basically wait for inspiration to strike,’ and he said, ‘that’s a copout — you’ll come up with more songs quicker if you put the time in, even if you throw out three quarters of what you come up with.’”
On “Favorite Place,” a song that leads off his most recent album unentitled, Gorka mused on a process that’s “still mysterious and still calls me.” It’s about the joy he finds in the middle of writing, when he knows it’s going to be a song and it’s just a matter of getting all the details right. Throughout, Hardy’s admonition echoes.
“Hope follows action … you start out with showing up and going to work,” he said. “Hopefully, during the working on stuff, a spark of inspiration will come along that’ll fuel you for the rest of the time. These days, despair is not an option, so I’ve got to do something … then the hope will come.”
Gorka deftly manifests that feeling on a standout track from unentitled called “Particle & Wave.”
The song came in response to the 2018 March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C.
“Watching the coverage on CNN, a still small voice in my head said, ‘never stop believing there’s goodness in the world,’” Gorka recalled. “It was like, ‘OK, that sounds like the language of a song.’”
With lines like “Though justice seems to hesitate / It’s not too late,” he introduces it at concerts with a background story. More often, though, Gorka prefers to let audiences infer the meaning of his songs. Sometimes he’s surprised, like the time a woman told him “I Saw a Stranger With Your Hair” reminded her of a son she’d lost.
“I’d thought of it mainly as a romantic song, but that’s the way it hit her, and that’s why it meant something to her,” he said. “People will figure out what the song is about to them … you don’t want to put blinders on the listener by describing what it’s about too much or where it came from.”
The new record, his 10th for Red House Records, is Gorka’s first release in seven years, with some songs that date even further back.
“There were some things from a while ago that I started to record but never finished, some were new and some were old,” he said. “It was over a fairly long period of time.”
He hosts virtual songwriting workshops multiple times a year with Eliza Gilkyson — the next is in October — and one piece of advice he shares is that modest ambitions are best. “So you’re not trying to write a song for all mankind,” he said. “Set some limits and then work within those limits — and there’s an infinity even within those.”
Hardy and the habit of writing as a bedrock guide him.
“Clear a physical space, as well as your mind, then monitor the thoughts and images coming through,” he said. “For me, morning brain is the most productive. Before going to bed, that’s also a good time — because the song will keep playing through the day.”
As he sings on another great song from unentitled, “Stay until the night’s gone / Stay till you can dream again.”
John Gorka When: Saturday, Aug. 29, 7:30 p.m. Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester Tickets: $40 at palacetheatre.org
Featured photo: John Gorka. Photo by Robert Hakalski.
By the time you read this the TV show Reacher, streaming on Amazon Prime Video and starring Alan Ritchson, will have released the fifth episode (out of eight total) of its fourth season.
If you haven’t been watching, you are so lucky because you have three and a half seasons of this excellent-fun show, based on the Lee Child books, to fill your TV watching time. Reacher (Ritchson) is a former military investigative whatever who travels the country being a massive slab of a man. Reacher doesn’t suffer fools and isn’t looking for trouble, but when he comes across injustice he is compelled to Get Involved and Make Wrongdoers Suffer. And sometimes he romances a lady. It’s a perfect show. In an early episode this season, he holds a fluffy white baby kitten. Also in an early episode, it takes a group of like five dudes plus two animal tranquilizers to bring Reacher down. Perfect!
The show dropped three episodes in early August and has been releasing the rest weekly, which means that you get a delicious punch-kick treat and then have to wait a whole week until the next one. Which sent me in search of some movies that can offer some of the same sense of ridiculous fun.
So far,Deep Water (a May theatrical release now streaming on MGM+ and available for rent or purchase) comes the closest to both the tone and the action I’m seeking. Ben (Aaron Eckhart) is the pilot on a passenger flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai. After we watch the world’s biggest jerk (Angus Sampson) carelessly stuff a sparking power charger into his luggage, we meet a variety of passengers and learn just enough about them to help us make guesses about who will die, in what order and how horribly. Eventually jerk’s suitcase explodes and the plane is forced down on open water. The landing executed by Ben and Captain Ben Kingsley (Wikipedia says his character’s name is Rich; I love this Oscar winner’s continued willingness to show up for whatever) would have been great but for the coral reef that shreds the plane into chunks, leaving the passengers with a variety of “how do I not die” problems to solve. And then the sharks show up.
I feel like the best review I can give of this movie is “somebody shoots a shark in the mouth with a flare gun!” If that sounds like the right kind of dumb for you, then this is your movie. It is definitely the right kind of dumb for me and it is a nice end-of-summer light-lift action watch.
Cold Storage (a February theatrical release also streaming on MGM+ and available for rent or purchase) is also goofy fun action, though even gorier than Deep Water and its many scenes of sharks eating people. Here, Naomi (Georgina Campbell) and Teacake (Joe Keery) are the overnight guards at a U-storage that has been built in and over a supersecret decommissioned military lab. Unbeknownst to them, decades earlier, government scientist types Robert (Liam Neeson) and Trini (Lesley Manville, which is rad) stored a hybrid, fast-spreading, mind-controlling fungus brought from space in one of the rooms deep underground. Robert warned — though no one listened — that changing weather patterns could allow the containment of that room to eventually fail. When it does, Naomi and Teacake find themselves fighting assorted fungus-zombie creatures while they wait for the Army, which turns out just to be Robert, to come and save them. Campbell and Keery have great bored-coworkers chemistry, which turns into great normies-fighting-alien-whatevers chemistry, and Neeson, Manville and Vanessa freakin’ Redgrave add just the right amount of, like, I wouldn’t go as far as “gravitas” exactly but straightfaced adult goofiness?
I also reached back to 2024 to watch the Netflix release Atlas, hoping for some goofball action. Alas, this movie starring Jennifer Lopez as an AI-hating scientist who must make peace with a robot-mech-suit buddy (voice of Gregory James Cohan) to fight the robot terrorist Simu Liu is not as goofy as that description suggests, despite having a “game for it” Sterling K. Brown in a supporting role as a military dude. Lopez, whose character’s name is Atlas, can be goofy fun, as this year’s Netflix release Office Romance reminded us all. She gets some moments to shine here, to be sassy to or with her robot buddy, named Smith, but not enough. This movie needed to take itself less seriously and unleash Lopez to be both sillier and badassier. Atlas is an OK thing to have on while scrolling back-to-school sales or napping.
Back at MGM+, I’ve found that a nice comedown after an episode of Reacher is an episode of The Westies, an eight-episode show in its first season about warring criminal interests in 1970s New York City. J.K. Simmons seems to be having fun as the beleaguered boss of the Westies criminal gang, trying to keep in line his own guys and deal with assorted law enforcement and the Gambino family, including up-and-comer John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headley). Also, the Troubles of Northern Ireland are spilling over into New York City in the form of characters played by Sarah Bolger (who I probably know best from her Mary Tudor days in The Tudors) and Allen Leech (one-time chauffeur Tom Branson from Downton Abbey). Titus Welliver also appears as a dirty cop tasked by the FBI with keeping an eye on Simmons’ character and his gang.
This is a grittier show, with violence that is grimmer and more downbeat the giddy “yippee!” of Reacher. But I enjoy the little window on an era and I miss watching Welliver in Bosch (all seven seasons of that, plus the three seasons of Bosch Legacy, are on Prime Video). The Westies is a compelling enough show to stick with — no Reacher, but then what is.
Featured photo: Reacher, from season one of Reacher. He is possibly even larger now.
Assumption Greekfest offers the favorites plus some variations
The Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester will hold its annual Greekfest this weekend.
“It is our annual Greek festival,” said event coordinator Costas Georgopoulos. “It’s a two-day event that we hold over the weekend to promote our parish community, our culture, our Greek hospitality and some Greek music.”
“But,” he added, “our food is our main driver.”
Not surprisingly, Georgopoulos said, there will be a lot of lamb on hand.
“We have our traditional barbecue lamb,” he said, “and what we do is they’re small chunks of lamb and we put them on a skewer and then we cook them on a rotisserie over charcoal. It’s marinated lamb with Greek spices.” The pit crew uses charcoal briquettes, he said.
“We don’t venture out to types of charcoal. We don’t want to mess with our recipe; we want to make sure it comes out consistently, every time.”
“We have our traditional chicken with marinated Greek spices as well,” Georgopoulos said, “The chicken is marinated because it’s a half a chicken, it’s not a chicken breast, it’s a half of a chicken. Our Greek meatballs are homemade with our Greek spices as well. Another really popular item is called pastitsio, which is a Greek lasagna, made with bechamel sauce with ground beef.”
For a lot of Greek food fans, the highlights of any festival are the pastries. Georgopoulos said his particular favorite is galaktoboureko.
“It’s like a custard pastry,” he said. It’s crispy phyllo dough with a little bit of custard inside. But this year we’re actually having chocolate baklava! I don’t know if you’ve ever had chocolate baklava, but it is to die for. It’s really good! It doesn’t look like your traditional baklava, it’s actually made with chocolate phyllo dough. It’s new for us this year, so we want to see how everyone likes it. We want to keep our traditions and our customs and our traditional food, but we try to venture out a little bit as well with new items.”
For many Greek people, festivals are one of the only times they can have loukoumades, which are fried dough balls with syrup.
“Some families do make them at home,” Georgopoulos said. “But — I don’t know if you’ve ever cooked with deep frying oil inside the house — it’s time-consuming, it’s a lot of manual work. It’s a little messy while you’re doing it inside the house, and the smell lingers for a while. So this is pretty much a festival tradition.”
Everyone looks forward to it, he said. “We make the dough right on site and we have a deep fryer that is under our big tent so everyone can see how they are made. And then we put the honey syrup up top. They have a choice, you know, just plain honey syrup or a little bit of walnuts as well, some powdered sugar and some cinnamon.”
For Georgopoulos, another highlight this year will be live music.
“We have a live band on Sunday,” he said. “We’re celebrating our 90th year anniversary for our parish. So we want to celebrate that milestone as well. They will play traditional Greek music and they’ll be there Sunday afternoon, so anyone who wants to experience some live Greek music, it’ll be Sunday. There won’t be any professional dancing, but we have folks who definitely can dance.”
Greekfest Where: Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, 111 Island Pond Road, Manchester, 623-2045, assumptionnh.org When: Saturday, Aug. 29, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 30, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. More: Admission is free. Visit assumptionnh.org/calendar-and-events-full/greekfest.
Featured photo: Greekfest at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church. Courtesy photo.
Every theater fan remembers a musical that closed early or got mauled by critics or simply never found its audience yet somehow left behind a handful of songs too good to disappear with it. That conundrum is the premise behind an upcoming cabaret-style show at Newmarket Millspace.
Bangers From Bad Musicals is the brainchild of actress Karissa Vincent, who cited Wonderland, a Lewis Carroll-inspired 2011 flop, as an example of the genre. She loved it as a kid, even if it didn’t last more than a month.
“The book is absolute trash,” Vincent allowed in a recent phone interview. “But the music is so good.”
Defining a bad musical is subjective, so Vincent drew a few lines to select songs for the performance. Shows needed to be reasonably well-known, so no workshop productions, and jukebox musicals like Escape From Margaritaville and Rock of Ages were nixed. “Because,” she said, “that comes down to whether you like the music.”
Divisive shows like Chess and Cats were handled a bit differently, and selections from each appear in Bangers.
“Both are highly snubbed but also highly regarded,” Vincent said. “You’ll see songs from them at the cabaret because there’s a reason for them to be there … not necessarily because the show was bad.”
Other certified bad-but-beloved musical selections included in Bangers come from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, The Last Ship, Love Never Dies and Starlight Express. The show will also feature a sneak preview from Carrie, a Millspace and Jonesing for Theater Company co-production coming in October.
The musical version of Stephen King’s horror classic has been redeemed, and Vincent looks forward to the 2.0 version.
“The original, like the ‘80s Carrie, was very bad,” she said. “The songs were great, the show was trash, it was an awful time. The new Carrie … is not bad, it is a great show, a lot of fun.”
Vincent has traveled to New York frequently for work or just to see theater, and has strong opinions on the genre’s more controversial entries. She thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2023 flop Bad Cinderella was unfairly maligned. “If you go in thinking it’s serious, like most Webber shows are, you’ll hate it. But if you go in looking for a comedy, it’s great.”
Based in the town’s Old Mill building, Newmarket Millspace regularly opens its cabaret nights to performers from across the Seacoast and beyond; Bangers is among those. Around 15 performers had submitted songs at the time of Vincent’s interview, drawing from groups like Jonesing for Theater, RGC and Dive-In.
“It is typically Seacoast performers,” Vincent said. “So people hailing from Portsmouth, Newmarket, Dover, Durham, like that kind of area for the most part, and some are from Maine as well.” The lineup will mix solos, duets and group numbers so everyone gets a featured moment without running the show too long.
As for what actually counts as a banger, Vincent said it’s a broader definition than pure energy. Lea Michele’s “Nobody’s Side” from Chess and the title number from Bad Cinderella are high-octane examples, but the night will have numbers that are more restrained. Though in her view, all of them are powerful.
Put simply, though, not all of these songs will be bombastic barn burners.
“One I’m singing is going to be a slower ballad,” Vincent said. “It’s from a bad musical, and it’s going to fit into that banger description — because it’s a beautiful song. But it’s not fast-paced.”
Audiences can expect a full bar, snacks and an intermission, with pianist Tim Goss accompanying performers and Vincent serving as host throughout the night.
For Vincent, the big appeal is the chance to give overlooked gems a second life outside the shows that buried them.
“There are a lot of great songs that have been lost in mediocre productions,” she said. “This is a good way to pull those out and to make people aware they’re good, even though the place they came from wasn’t that great.”
Bangers From Bad Musicals When: Saturday, Aug. 29, 7:30 p.m. Where: Newmarket Millspace, 55 Main St., Newmarket Tickets: $15, portsmouthnhtickets.com
A look at the bakeries turning out gluten-free breads and treats
Lisa Withrow had pretty much run out of patience with reading food labels.
“We have eight grandchildren,” Withrow said. “One of our granddaughters was diagnosed with celiac disease when she was 5. And at that point there was significant damage to her intestine. And they suggested the whole family go gluten-free because they did not want her to be around gluten. So learning that — I’m a health care provider and yes, we learned about that in med school but … experience was very humbling. You go through the initial overwhelm of ‘They can’t have the food,’ ‘What can they have?,’ reading the label, trying to figure it out.”
“In this country,” Withrow said, “it’s challenging. There were labeling laws, but it was a pretty humbling process as a health care provider to go through that anticipatory anxiety over buying things that are safe for someone with celiac disease.” She quickly became frustrated with how little of the specific information she was looking for was included in many labels. “Sometimes we’d have to go to three and four and five or more stores, just to get our weekly groceries.”
For Withrow and her husband Paul, the answer was to open their own business, Gluten-Free Express, in Bedford.
“It’s an independent store,” Withrow said. “Gluten-Free Express is a completely gluten-free, celiac-safe food market. It’s a mini-mart with some groceries, but it also has take-out [prepared food]. Everything in the store is going to say “gluten-free” on it or “certified gluten-free,” including what we use to cook the grill items. And, because there are a lot of people who like to know exactly … we have a notebook that has the ingredients of everything in the store.”
Figuring out gluten
Gluten is a term given to a family of proteins found in some grains — especially wheat, barley and rye — that gives a stretchy quality to bread doughs, which bakers love but which can cause havoc in some people who eat it.
Bonne the Baker Bakery and Market. Courtesy photo.
According to Dr. Vincent Aguirre, executive director of digestive health with the Elliot Health System, gluten sensitivity is fairly common. The most well known gluten sensitivity is called celiac disease, which he described as “an autoimmune condition, where immune cells called lymphocytes are activated by gluten and attack the interior of the intestines.” This prevents celiac sufferers from being able to metabolize nutrients. In the United States, he said, an estimated one percent of the population suffers from some degree of celiac sensitivity. It can cause a myriad of symptoms, he said, “which is what can make it so difficult to diagnose.” Different people can be more or less sensitive to gluten, Dr. Aguirre said, and their symptoms can be just as individual.
For the Withrows, ensuring their business was completely gluten-free meant they had to consider factors that casual label-readers rarely have to think about.
“That includes anything we cook on the grill,” Lisa Withrow said, meaning the oil that foods are fried in, and even the breading and coating that prepared foods have. “We have takeout items,” she said. “We’re not a restaurant, but [customers] can come for takeout items, so chicken tenders and fries and that sort of food. We have a fryer and we have a grill and we have soup and we have an oven that we cook things in. … And none of those can come in contact with ingredients that might have even trace amounts of gluten in them.”
Withrow said the terminology can be tricky.
“We’ve gone through the certification to be gluten-free,” she said, “and that was an education. There are different labels and levels of ‘gluten-free’ and one of them means there can be no more than five parts per million [of gluten]. One means no more than 10, and the rest are no more than 20. And so it’s just confusing that people don’t know that if they have to stay within certain parameters. And then many people think [gluten-free is] like a dietary fad. You’ll be at a restaurant and the attitude is, ‘OK, you want something gluten-free. Does it HAVE TO be gluten-free, or are you just doing it because you want to?’”
Meant to share
Matt Berry is the chef and owner of Lovejoy Restaurant in Milford. When he put together the menu for Lovejoy, he said, it turned out almost entirely gluten-free accidentally. Everything is either gluten-free already or can be made that way.
“It kind of non-intentionally became a big part of our menu,” Berry said. “At previous establishments, I’ve had a lot of staff members who were gluten-free, so I just kind of got used to preparing our staff meals and stuff toward their restrictions. And as I was writing a menu [for Lovejoy], where I could fit in a gluten-free substitute or having more dishes be naturally gluten-free, I did.”
“I’ve been using a one-to-one flour substitute that works really well for all of my baking stuff,” Berry said. “We came up with a really good gluten-free dredge for [frying] all of our chicken and stuff. Dredge, specifically for something like fried chicken, you can jump down like a deep, deep rabbit hole. People take their fried chicken very seriously. And growing up, this friend that I had in high school, I stayed at his house a lot, and his mom used to make this like fried chicken, but the breading she used was made from instant potato flakes. And I really, really loved it, it was so good! So a couple of years ago, when I was a line cook, I wanted to, like, kind of mess around with that. I started using a lot of potato starch for many things, but specifically for dredge and … tempura batter and stuff, utilizing more starches and less flour with gluten, I found that I enjoyed that crispiness a little bit more, anyway. I felt that it stayed crispy for longer and it just achieved like my ideal fried chicken batter.”
Many of the dishes at Lovejoy are appetizers designed to be shared, Berry said, and they are also fried. As he pulled the menu together, it made sense to stick with gluten-free dredge, similar to the one on his favorite fried chicken, tempura for example.
“The usual recipe for a classic tempura batter is something like tonic water or seltzer water, flour, and egg,” he said. “It’s usually pretty straightforward and simple, but we don’t use egg in ours. We use soda water, flour, and some spices and salt — obviously the gluten-free flour. It’s for our tempura oyster mushrooms, which are a heavy eater here.”
“But yeah,” Berry said, “I didn’t go into it intentionally, trying to hunt down gluten or to write a gluten-free menu. It just kind of like naturally became that.” He said a commitment to focusing on fresh and locally grown ingredients has also steered him away from gluten.
“We get our breads from a local bakery, Sunflower Bakery in Nashua, but for everything else? We’re not in a big grain-producing part of the country. What I get from local farms is produce and stuff, not necessarily grain.”
Baking without gluten
Bonne Richards, on the other hand, was very deliberate in her decision to open a gluten-free bakery.
“I own a gluten-free, vegan bakery and market in Nashua [Bonne the Baker Bakery and Market, 2 Cellu Drive, Nashua],” she said. “It’s doing fabulous. I’ve only been open three months, but everyone that comes in the door has the biggest smile on their face and is so happy and relieved that they can come in here and buy anything — and I mean anything in my store — and it has no gluten and is vegan, no dairy, no eggs, no animal products. They know they’re safe if they have celiac or an allergy, and I think southern New Hampshire is becoming the place to come now to find treats and food, if you have a specialized diet.”
Richards said that she has noticed a growing awareness in the general public that food allergies and sensitivities are a medical reality. It wasn’t too long ago, she said, that people who couldn’t eat gluten were viewed as “picky eaters.”
“I don’t think that even now everyone thinks about that,” Richards said. “Gluten-free people can get sick; they’ll get really sick.” Additionally, she said, there is a growing number of people who are trying to cut down on gluten as part of a healthy lifestyle. “I know myself,” she said, “even though I don’t have celiac disease, if I eat gluten, I swell up and my hips start hurting and my knees start hurting — the joints start hurting. So I choose not to eat it for that reason. I am seeing more of that kind of thing. I think a lot of people are worried about what’s in their food more than ever.”
Taking such a non-traditional path in her baking has let Richards reinterpret some classics, she said.
“I make these savory turnovers, and people are all over that. A lot of people are like, ‘I haven’t had an apple pie in forever’ or ‘I haven’t had a breakfast pastry in so long!’ and they’re just so happy. I can’t keep those items in stock. They could go buy that savory pastry somewhere else that says it’s gluten-free. But if it’s in a regular bakery, they have to really seriously think about cross-contamination.” It’s almost impossible for a traditional bakery to not have flour in the air, she said.
Richards is looking forward to finding out the rhythms of the business cycle of a gluten-free bakery.
“I think it’s going to get really busy real soon,” she said, “because we’re coming into apple cider doughnut season, with the fall flavors that everybody loves, apples, pumpkins, that kind of stuff. And then it will be the holidays, and we’ll see a lot more people coming in.” What she’s really interested in, Richard said, is the period right after the holidays, when so many people commit to a healthier diet, even if only briefly.
“It’s the same thing every year, after Christmas into New Year’s, everyone goes on a diet. Nobody’s eating any treats and then all of a sudden Valentine’s Day comes around and everybody’s eating again and it starts all over again.” She wonders how that will translate into gluten-free and vegan baking, she said.
Richards said baking without wheat flour or other ingredients with gluten requires finding substitutes, which might be different for any given recipe. Gluten, she said, creates long strands of protein that form a mesh that traps gas bubbles, which help baked goods rise.
“There’s almost always some xanthan gum involved,” in gluten-free baking, she said. “A lot of times, for breads [which require extra-stretchy dough] people use psyllium husk, which is a binder — a fiber. Some recipes use different types of eggs, or flax seeds, applesauce or bananas.”
Another challenge of baking without gluten, Richards said, is browning.
“That’s one of the things that can make gluten-free bread so tricky,” she said. “Gluten-free flour does not like to brown up.”
According to baker/owner Evan Lang of Dishon Gluten-Free Bakery in Manchester, baking gluten-free bread requires a different mindset than making muffins or brownies.
“We work with an actual dough that proofs,” he said. “It’s not a batter.” To that end, he uses psyllium husk as a binding ingredient.
“It’s the fiber that’s in Metamucil,” he said. “It absorbs water and allows us to create a dough that is workable. In terms of browning, we do add a little bit of sugar to our dough to help with that. [Browning] also has to do with the fermentation process and time. And lastly, it’s about oven temperature. We bake everything pretty hot — between 480 and 525 [degrees], which is pretty hot for bread. But that’s what allows us to get kind of the color that you see here on these breads that comes from baking hot and long.”
Pizza for all
But what if your entire business is built around gluten?
Tyler Carmilia is the kitchen manager at 900 Degrees Neapolitan Pizzeria in Manchester. The key to a good pizza is its crust. For 900 Degrees, the secret of serving a high-quality pizza crust that is safe for someone on a gluten-free diet, Carmilia said, has been to outsource it.
“We use a [pre-made] brand called Gillian’s,” he said, “which is available through a number of our vendors. It is a gluten-free crust, but given all the flour in the restaurant, we can’t guarantee that anything we make in-house is 100 percent gluten-free.”
“We use a 12-inch crust,” Carmilia continued. “It’s made with a potato starch, tapioca starch and a little bit of rice flour. We bake it in our oven. It comes on aluminum trays to help kind of prevent the cross-contamination.” Regular pizza made with a wheat crust is baked on the floor of the oven, which means that the non-gluten crust needs to be separated from the bricks.
Carmilia said that even though pizzas with non-wheat crusts are still in the minority of pizzas sold at 900 Degrees, customers order them almost every day.
“We probably sell anywhere from 20 to 40 a week,” he said. “We do add an upcharge [for non-wheat crusts] just because it costs more, because we do get it from a vendor.” It’s a fairly crisp crust, he said, “but we get people that’ll order it like well-done as well, just to ensure that it’s a little bit more familiar. With us not cooking it directly on the fire brick in the oven and it being on that aluminum, it doesn’t get that char per se, but it will get a nice crispy crust. We’ve always had a lot of repeat customers coming back in, telling us it’s one of the best ones that they’ve had, especially with the quality of toppings that we use.”
Cupcake fun
When discussing gluten-free diets, a classic conundrum that comes to mind is a child’s birthday party, or cupcakes to celebrate something special at school. Bite Me Kupcakez in Merrimack specializes in that sort of sweet treat.
“Our baked goods are exclusively gluten-, dairy- and nut -free,” said baker Addisen Tilley. “All of our baked goods are made with an all-purpose gluten-free flour, and we replace the milk with other milk alternatives in order to separate the dairy from it. We do also have a vegan section that uses egg replacements instead of egg.”
Because Bite Me doesn’t use any traditional wheat flour, Tilley said, there is little to no chance of cross-contamination.
“There’s absolutely no gluten in the air at all,” she said. “We don’t allow any gluten in our area. Even if employees come in with lunch, they can’t bring anything into the building that is not gluten-free.”
“Cupcakes are our specialization,” Tilley said. “We have a variety of baked goods every day, depending on the supply and demand. But aside from the cupcakes our specialties are whoopie pies, we have muffins, we have brownies that we have pretty often, we have doughnuts, any [sweet] baked goods that you can think of we will likely have.”
Tilley said some groups will place orders for gluten-free items to make sure nobody is accidentally exposed to gluten.
“Some schools will come in knowing that they have kids who are gluten-free. And then other times it’s a safety precaution because in a big population like that, you are likely to have allergies sometimes.”
The cupcakes children like best are pretty much the traditional ones you would assume, Tilley said. “Funfetti is a very popular one. And then our basic chocolate and vanilla is usually the go-to for parties, because that guarantees that every kid gets something that they like. We have some fun sprinkles. One of our favorite decorations is edible glitter, and that always works very well.” She said inclusion is an important principle for Bite Me Kupcakez. “Our doors are open to absolutely everyone. We care a lot about our customers, and especially on last-minute orders we do our best to include them. Everyone is welcome in. Everyone should be able to get some sort of treat, because no one should be left out on a big day.”
Gluten-free expo
Jody Donohue, president of Great New England Events, has taken the gluten-free concept to a new level. Her company will hold the first ever Gluten Never Ever festival Saturday, Sept. 5, and Sunday, Sept. 6, at the Hampshire Dome in Milford.
“I’ve actually been wanting to do this for years,” Donohue said. “I’m a celiac. My two daughters have to eat gluten-free. So this is something my family lives with and has lived with for years. So for this particular event I’m also a customer. I wanted to bring this together for the community of people who have to eat gluten-free. It’s an event where people walk through the door, and they don’t have to worry about labels or if it’s safe for them or if [food] is gluten-free or certified or friendly. I want them to walk in and just be able to eat.”
The Gluten Never Ever Festival will feature craftsmen and vendors dedicated exclusively to gluten-free products, according to the event’s website (glutennevereverexpo.com). There will be “nearly 100 vendors, live music, cocktails and beer, food trucks, workshops, and plenty of food samples.”
“New Hampshire has some incredible gluten-free businesses,” Donohue said, “and not just New Hampshire; New England. There are products throughout New England, but they’re scattered. So I thought let’s bring them all together under one roof.”
“There will be a recipe wall,” Donohue said. “We’re doing a 75-foot recipe wall, and we have a template online. You fill out the recipe of your favorite gluten-free recipe, and we’re going to tape it to the wall. And people can go with their phones and take photos of the recipes. We want everybody to be able to share.”
The inventor of a gluten-tax-calculation app will be on hand. “She will be doing a seminar explaining this new app that she created for people to use to be able to track [gluten-specific] tax deductions for them. So there will be not just food but resources. People will pay $10 for the whole weekend, so if they can come back Sunday to eat off the other trucks they haven’t eaten off of or bring their coolers and stock up again on some of the products that they really like.”
The gluten-free Gluten Free Express (9 Triangle Lane, Manchester, 782-8386, glutenfreeexpress.com) is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
Bonne the Baker Bakery and Market (2 Cellu Drive, Nashua, 669-4200, bonniethebaker.com) is open Tuesday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Dishon Bakery (915 Elm St., Manchester, 600-1773, dishonbakery.com) is open Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
900 Degrees Neapolitan Pizzeria (50 Dow St., Manchester, 641-0900, 900degrees.com) is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Bite me Kupcakez Cafe and Bakery (4 Mound Court, Merrimack, 674-4459, bitemekupcakez.com) is open Tuesday through Friday, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, and 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Sunday.
The First Gluten Never Ever Festival will take place Saturday, Sept. 5, and Sunday, Sept. 6, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Huge Hampshire Dome (34 Emerson Road, Milford). Tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the gate. Visit glutennevereverexpo.com.
Featured photo: Gluten-free loaves at Dishon Bakery. Photo by John Fladd.
